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Melchior woke up earlier than ever. His clothes
were washed, clean and ready. The alarm clock was displaying five o'clock in
its screen. Melchior smiled, getting out of the bed and changing his clothes.

"No, no, Mirabelle... He is fine."

Melchior turned his head to the open door to
his right - it was Lunia's voice coming from the hallway.

"Yes, yes..." Lunia said to the phone
in his hand. "He is safe and sound. I still haven't started his practice
yet... I will take longer to do so than Cynthia or Nathalie. Can you please
tell them Melchior is safe? Also... Would you mind asking Ushuriel when he will
return what he owes me?"

Melchior smiled and laughed, driving Lunia's
attention to him. The Hungarian astronomy teacher hung off and looked at
Melchior with a serene countenance.

"Long story." Lunia said. "Well,
your mother asked for you and so did Nathalie and Cynthia. Apparently, they went to search you short after Balthazar
gave you a call that day, and they have arrived in Dresden yesterday night,
worried about your life."

"I can imagine..." Melchior recalled,
gloomy. "I hope they are more relieved..."

"So do I." Lunia replied.
"Well..." He looked at his watch. "We need to go... See, we can
have breakfast at the University. Shall we?"

Melchior smiled and agreed with his head. Lunia
then took him outside, showing him his car - a 1969 navy blue Chevy Camaro.

"I bought this when I went to the
States..." Lunia said. "Recently, I made some improvements on it, yet
its coat is still the very same. I must say it is far more practical than
riding a broom everywhere I go."

He opened the car, sitting of the driver's seat
with Melchior on his side. Then, he rode to the eastern part of the city, where
the University was located. It was 6:30 on the morning when they arrived, and
the building was already crowded with teachers, janitors and some early-rising
students, which seemed to grow in numbers as the minutes went by.

Lunia offered Melchior some of his cinnamon
buns and a bit of the hot chocolate served on the teacher's hall. Lunia finished his breakfast a bit earlier
than Melchior. He grabbed a cup of coffee, ready to tell Melchior some things.

"Before you come to my classes, I want to
ask you one thing, and one thing only." Lunia said serious. "I want
you to pay attention. Listen to what I say there, okay?"

Melchior nodded, agreeing with Lunia. He
swallowed his last bite of pastry and stood up, following Lunia out of the
teacher's hall into the old hallways of the University. They walked around a
hundred meters before arriving in Lunia's class. He entered through the door
and saw a large amphitheater room, which had room for at least one hundred
students.

"Sit in the middle of the first line,
please." Lunia asked. "And please... Pay close, very close
attention!"

Lunia smiled at the Salvadorian mage, which sat
specifically where the Hungarian Hellhound asked. When the large clock on the
class showed seven o'clock, the room was full of students.

"Jónapot kivánov*!" Lunia said, writing his name on the chalkboard. "Welcome
to your first class of Astronomy of the semester. Nevem** Lunia KárdosKárpatí, and I am your teacher. Shall we begin our path into the depths of
Space?"

Lunia asked for each student to introduce him
or herself, including Melchior, causing an overall surprise and fascination.
Then, Lunia wrote down every single name and surname he heard; on the
following, he got a thick, large book, which he opened.

"Today, we talk about... Space!"
Lunia started with a smile. "Space, of course! But more than that - we
will talk about what has brought
Space to life as we know - and still don't know. All of you learned about the
Big Bang theory and such, right? See, in my personal experience, it goes far,
far beyond that..."

He mischievously looked at his students.

"I was an explosion, a large gathering of
larger forces in a single spot. It was the pure sum of force and energy in one
single place, ready to expand and explode. It force was so big, intense and
creative that it is still going; our universe is still expanding, growing. The
question is - up to when? When will it stop growing, or even further - when
will it diminish once more, repeating its cycle? We still don't know for sure.
And probably, we never will..."

"We are pretty young out here. You, you,
you and I." Lunia continued with a mischievous smile. "We are
meaningless in the Universe time. We know nothing. We hear nothing. What we
study here is what every single person should know - we study our neighbors,
the planets, comets, asteroids, stars, galaxies and black holes. We study those
who, unlike us, hold the answers. The ones who have seen and heard it all - the
ones who truly know something."

Melchior was bewildered; never in a million of
years he would have thought he'd be sitting there, listening to a college
class, specially that subject, explained in another way, with a different point
of view. One person raised his left hand, asking for the floor.

"Ok then..." The young man replied.
"Don't you think your explanation is... Like, how can I say, too mythological?"

The entire classroom, except Melchior, exploded
in laughter. Lunia tilted his head to the left, smiling.

"I don't think mythological is the word you are looking for, Mr. Bagy." He replied very calm,
raising his head. "I think you wanted to say 'insane', didn't you? You are right - it sounds insane. It is insane. It is insane... If you think
with the mind of someone stuck on 18th century and farther back. Are you that close-minded, Mr. Bagy? Tell me...
All of you... What is Cosmos?"

Melchior timidly raised his hand, which was
trembling.

"Melchior, you hold the floor." Lunia
said, pointing his pencil to the mage.

"It means everything." Melchior
replied. "It is surrounding us and it is inside us at the same time.
Everyone holds a small universe, a small cosmos, inside his mind. All of us,
sometimes, rather live in this place we created, this small, ever-expanding
cosmos of our own, than live on the reality we are stuck on. Yet... I believe
this is not the answer you seek."

"Wrong." Lunia replied with a smile,
putting his hands behind his back. "It is one possible
answer to my question, and it is right. The Cosmos are the order. The Cosmos
and the Universe are the same. It means everything. It means nothing. We don't
control this Universe, but we can hold our own. My comparative now will seem
weird to most of you, but I'll use it anyway, and I believe you will
understand..."

Lunia put his left hand in
his pocket, taking a large Forint*** coin out of it.

"Now, look at this
coin." Lunia said, showing it to the classroom. "I want you to
imagine it as a newborn star. It seems stable, right? Now..."

Having the entire class as
witnesses, the coin started burning spontaneously. Melchior, unlike everyone
else, knew why it ignited and burned.

"This is a star as it will always be until its death." He said,
making the coin fluctuate. "A large, gaseous flaming ball, burning until
the end of its very existence. A star destroys itself. Eats itself. Explodes,
generating a Supernova. Yet, this very destructive force, this very destructive
behavior is capable of creating. Look at
the person to your left. Now, look to the person of your right. You are all stellar matter. Stars are made of Hydrogen and Helium, we all
know. Through its combustion, other elements are created - heavier elements,
which will eventually generate other compounds if correctly combined. Yet not
all stars have a living planet as ours, all of them are capable of creating
planets good enough to generate life. Stars are creators and destroyers at the same
time. Its creations and its own self-destruction leads to another stage of
creation, which generates planets, complex clusters and such, making the Cosmos
as complex as it deserves to be. Just like we do."

The coin disintegrated in
the flames and its ashes flew through the classroom. He gave a mischievous
smile to the entire class.

"I hope you have
understood now what I previously meant." Lunia said. "Now, I will ask
you to get your notebooks and books, for I'll start dropping more and more
theory on you. I hope you all are rested and attentive, for I don't want anyone
lost in the middle of the path."

The entire classroom
obeyed, except Melchior. He was so fascinated that he didn't want to make notes
or read the books - he just wanted to hear Lunia's voice and explanations.
Fortunately for him, he'd listen a lot of what the Hungarian Hellhound had to
say...

May 24th, 2013

Once again, Lunia was
lecturing with all his might. His chalkboard was full of notes, mathematical
problems and planets. Melchior was sitting on the same place Lunia asked, as he
did every day.

"Chaos and order will
always be together." Lunia said to his class. "You cannot have one
without the other. At a certain point, everything in Cosmos had either of them,
and it is cyclical - someday, the order will be denied and shattered, and chaos
will return. Sooner or later, order will return and so on. I think of this as
the relationship of a forest with fire. Think the forest as your cosmos.
Imagine it had started with order, with everything functioning harmoniously.
Now, assume that, someday, something changes in its electrical fields, and a
'lighting' hits your cosmos, and sets fire to one of its trees, and this fire
spreads. This is chaos. One of your trees might have been a planet or an entire
galaxy, destroyed by either a large comet, in the case of the planet, or
swallowed by a black hole or even another colliding galaxy. This is what fire
promoted in this situation. This is the destructive part. Yet, the ashes of the
fallen trees may fertilize the soil of your forest, giving chances for new
trees to grow. Planets can be created. Galaxies can be created as well.
Different from the previous ones, yet holding the same or even more beauty than
them. See... Fire, or Chaos, brought disorder and allowed order to establishes.
Now, keeping this in mind, I'd like you guys to open on page..."

Melchior had his notebook
in hands, writing everything down. Never in his life he had been so happy.

"Fire is creation...
Fire is destruction... Stars are fire... Cosmos is fire..." He thought,
writing those thoughts down.

While Lunia gave his
students more work, he got his little journal and wrote things on it.

May 31st, 2013

Lunia and Melchior were the
last people on the empty classroom. Lunia was closing his briefcase when
something got his attention.

"No." Melchior
said. "A friend of mine gave it to me so that I could write down all my
memories during my training in the art of Elements. This includes this phase I
am having here in Hungary with you."

"Fascinating..."
Lunia commented. "Are your friends nice?"

Melchior's eyes widened.

"Yes, they are."
He replied, surprised. "At least I think they are."

"Good. Good..."
Lunia whispered. "See... You've been with me for at least two weeks... I
think you have done enough theoretical work here."

"Meaning?"
Melchior rhetorically asked.

"I am taking you out
of Budapest." Lunia mischievously replied. "I still want to give you
more theory. I have given it shallowly to you. But in Balantonfüred I can show you the rest.
Unlike my fellow companions, I'd rather study
magic than raise it out of nowhere. I think you and I will have quite a good
time."

"Of course!"
Melchior replied, thrilled. "I can't wait for it!"

"Then... We will head
out three days from now." Lunia said. "I am going to talk to the headmaster
now in order to take some days off. I'll invent something, like a doctor degree
or something... Yet I don't need it, for I am a post-doc already." He
completed with a chuckle.

Melchior was thrilled, with
a smile wide open in his face. What better ways to learn magic than through
Science? Wasn't Science a form of magic as well?

***

Balatonfüred, Hungary - 8h a.m.

June
6th, 2013

Balatonfüred was a resort town in a
Hungarian county, on the north shore of the large Lake Balaton. It holds an
excellent water and a significant yachting life and coasting fishing. Melchior
and Lunia took a train to get there, and it took three days for them to arrive
there.

Lunia had a small property
there - a small two-floored, gypsy-themed house.

Melchior obeyed Lunia,
giving him his small suitcase. Lunia opened the house, which looked like a
gypsy wagon, just like the bedroom in which Melchior met the Hellhound. He put
the belongings on Melchior's bed, and asked him to go to the living room. Then,
he sat there with Melchior.

"Ready for some more
lessons?" Lunia asked. "First, I think you know what I'll do."

"Lock my Elemental
Seals, right?" Melchior asked.

Lunia nodded affirmatively,
taking his Elemental Key Seal out of his shirt.

"Well... Since you
have no clue of what Ice does... I won't seal it." Lunia said, gently
pulling Melchior's arm, so that he could show his bracelet. "Still, I will
seal Air and Earth Seals. Take a deep breath. You'll need it."

Melchior obeyed, taking a
deep breath. Lunia inserted the key on the keyhole and turned it, locking Air
and Earth Seals, which disappeared from the bracelet. Melchior suddenly felt
his breath unstable and hard, and his arms were as heavy as lead for him. Also,
his eyesight became blurred, and he felt slower in movement.

"Not this again!"
Melchior painfully whispered.

"I hate to do this,
Melchior, but it is a necessary pain. As I said, you seem quite natural on Fire
witch crafting, so I will just improve your natural abilities. So... Let's talk
theoretically, shall we?"

Melchior slowly nodded,
agreeing.

"You paid attention to
my classes, didn't you?" Lunia asked. "If you did, you may have
noticed the qualities and defects of Fire. Fire brings chaos, pain and destruction.Fire
damages, burns and curses it target. However, fire also brings order, power and
creation. Like a phoenix, fire gives the reborn ability to the ground.
Fire, through its aggressiveness, through its tough love, brings life back.

"What for, besides
enriching my spellbook?" Melchior asked.

"You are
confused." Lunia replied mischievously. "It is completely
understandable - Nathalie and Cynthia challenged you as your graduation, right?
I don't want to do the same, but I am afraid I'll have to. However, you'll be
more used to the limitations given by the Seals. That way, you won't feel so
much disadvantages against me. Right?"

Lunia smiled at Melchior,
conjuring a large fireball, which he made float upon their heads.

"Very well..."
Lunia serenely began. "Look at the fireball I casted - it doesn't seem to
be heating the place up, does it? The answer is clearly no. Why? Because I decided to suppress
this quality. In the study of Fire Spells, we often focus more on the damage
than on control itself. Fire is power, but if you are unable to control your
own power, you became a power slave. Are you following?"

Melchior nodded.

"Alright." Lunia
continued, pleased. "Ignition stands for burst - that
initial blast, which makes engines work. Here, we talk about the fast, easy-casting
fire strikes, which can be single or multiple targeted. These kind of spells
are easy to develop and evolve, but can be quite hard to control if casted at
the verge of anger. Here, you can also create barriers and create from minor
tools to full-fire-based weapons. Understood?"

"Yes." Melchior
replied.

"Power, of course, stands
for power and domain - the greater spells go here. You can destroy multiple
foes, created explosions, burn forests down, control lava and massive amounts
of fire with these kind of spells. They are much more complex than Ignition
spells, and far more difficult to control. However if you succeed... Nothing,
except strong Ice spells, will stand on your way. Clear?"

"Yes, sir!"
Melchior happily replied.

"Very well..."
Lunia said, discarding the immense fireball. "What I want you to do,
Melchior, is to prepare yourself for battle - you will create four
spells for me, 3 Ignition-based and one Power-based. I'll be giving you
orientation all times, but you cannot make that clear what you want to do. I'll
give you one month to do it, alright?"

"Well... One
month?" Melchior hesitantly asked. "I'll see what I'll be able to put
through."

"I know it will be
above average." Lunia replied. "So... Your time... Will be starting
now!"